Augustin-Jean Fresnel Quotes

1788–1827 France

Augustin-Jean Fresnel (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century. But he is perhaps better known for inventing the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) Fresnel lens and for pioneering the use of "stepped" lenses to extend the visibility of lighthouses, saving unknown numbers of lives at sea.

France
Academics
Engineers
Physicists

Random Augustin-Jean Fresnel quote

4 quotes

It's not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

I find nothing so painful as having to lead men.

If we have sometimes gone astray in wanting to simplify the elements of a science, it is because we have established systems before having gathered a large number of facts.

In choosing a theory, one should pay attention to simplicity in hypotheses only. Simplicity in computation can be of no weight in the balance of probabilities. Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to have proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Augustin-Jean Fresnel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.